When Sweet Taters Turn Sour

Blood money is one thing. Blood Vegetables another. The world is truly a dark place.



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All That Glitters Is Not Gold

Let's play some word association.

Thanksgiving.

Christmas.

Gobble times two.

Fat.

Juicy.

Plump.

Butterball.

Smoked.

Fried.

Baked.

Yep, there are lots of words associated with those delectable birds known far and wide as turkeys.

Wanna know a word that should never be associated with turkey.

Ground.

How about another?

Burger.

That's right folks 36 million pounds of ground turkey has been recalled due to health concerns regarding anti-biotic resistant bacteria. And I, being a self-appointed spokesman for all that is holy and good, AKA meat, have received a handful of email from folks asking what I think about meat now that a whole bunch of it is tainted.

And I'm in a rather delicate position here as my literary agent has instructed me not to reveal much from my upcoming book Lettuce Is The Devil: The Culinary Dogma of a Devout Meat Man  so I can't say as much as I would like to here, because long before this recall, I had a chapter planned to shed light on the dangers associated with worshiping the false meats.  

But turkey is meat you say?

Yes, it is. But a burger is meat to be red meat. That is the natural order. Turkey burgers and turkey bacon for that matter or evil my friends. They are the handiwork of the heath consciousness. The plight of the cowards who kowtow to calorie counts and cholesterol screening. Life is meant to be enjoyed. You are going to die anyway. Is two three, even five years worth a life of dietary dissatisfaction.

Hell no it isn't.

Work, red lights, anal bosses, mortgages, shitty drivers, meddling doctors, ex wives, abusive husbands, whiny kids, gossipy coworkers, traffic jams animal rights activists, politicians, cancer.

I could go on forever listing stress inducing things in this world. Why stress over every bite you put into your mouth. For the love of your gut, eat a fucking burger. A real burger not any of the fake shit. Stay away from the false meats.

Turkey burger.
Turkey bacon.
Soy anything.

And dude or dudettes, if you actually believe that giant-assed mushroom tastes as good as a real steak go check yourself into a psych ward. You need help. Of course in your delusional state you are likely to mistake the padded vest they put you in for a marshmallow.


   

Beef, It's What's In The News

I have two pieces of meaty news to share today. One quite said, the other simply peculiar.

Since 1893 the monks of Assumption Abbey in Richardton, North Dakota have raised cattle. (See I've been telling your beef is holy) But do to a lack of monks with cowboy skills the abbey is giving up their cattle operation and going to lease their pasture to other ranchers in the area.

To be truthful, I've never had Trappist Burger or Steak but I have partook in many a fine Trappist beer-- Chimay, Westmalle, Rochefort, Westvleteren The monks of those abbey's brew many fine and dark beverages so I pray that they forever fins monks with brewing skills.


Now to news item number two.

KETCHIKAN, Alaska — A taxidermist earned a place in pop history for preserving Lady Gaga's now-famous raw-meat dress for display in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland.

My question is, couldn't Jack Link have simply turned it all into jerky? I can hear and see the new campaign slogan now where people could leave the big hairy dude alone and start playing jokes on Gaga... Messin' with Snatchcrotch.

Ciao

I'll be the first to admit it ... I'm a simple guy. I like very basic things, especially in the food department.

Meat. By now y'all realize I'm one step shy of being a total carnivore. Beef, pork, chicken, seafood, a wide variety of wild game. All of it is fine, long as you cook it. Raw fish is bait not food.

Name a meat and there is a good chance I've eaten it, maybe even made jerky from it, but don't ruin good meat by smothering in some fancy damn sauce or piling on a bunch of green crap and calling it herbs. Fry it, bake it, grill it, dehydrate it, but don't get any fancier with it that sticking between two pieces of bread. Ahhh ... Meat Sandwich.

Think of that stuff up above as your prologue, since I'm just now getting to the MEAT of this particular post.

What's wrong with calling a spud a spud? A burger a burger? A sandwich a sandwich?

Gotta be something cause all of a sudden every commercial, fast food chain, and frozen dinner company around is offering something called a panini. Looks like a hot sandwich with some fancy grill marks to me.

 

Now I understand why people stopped calling Tuna, dogfish. I mean most people are rather fond of man's best friend, unless you happen to be in Michael Vick's close circle of friends, and I can understand how the name dogfish would deter sales. Same thing with Mahi Mahi. Sure they are really dolphin fish but when you say dolphin most people think porpoise and start thinking of The Lassie of the sea, Flipper. Same exact show with a different animal star but that is another post for another day.

But why panini? 

 

I happen to like the word sandwich, and between you and me the word panini sounds like a slang term for the lower portion of a woman's anatomy. Sure go ahead, and laugh but it sounds better than Vajayjay which seems to be the trendy word of late. I say we all boycott the word panini and just call the damn things what they are, hot sandwiches.

I'm going to stop here because the rest of thoughts and metaphors would only lead me down a twisted and bumpy road. Which would probably get me in trouble, but I'm curious what other words or product names do you think are misnomers. What word makes you giggle like a room full of nine year old boys at every mention of the word Uranus?

My, What A BIG Appetite You Have

Not long ago I was asked, "Travis, is there any kind of meat you'd never eat?"

The immediate answer to that is, "Never is a long damn time so no, I'd chow down on any KIND of meat if the circumstances were right. Or perhaps wrong depending how you look at it."

But unlike men, all meat is created equal and I'd certainly forgo eating a few classifications of critters as long as there were other alternatives. And no, I do not not count lettuce as one of those alternatives.

So perhaps the better question is ... "Travis, what is the worst kind of meat you've ever tasted, and hope to never sink your teeth into again?"

To that I say, Pronghorn Antelope.

I love to hunt and I love to eat what I shoot, so when a few years back I happened to luck into a permit I made sure my trust old .243 was sighted in and headed out in pursuit. 

My hunt was successful. I gutted, skinned and butchered the animal myself as I have many deer, aoudad sheep, and countless other game. I was eager to sample some of the meat so I marinated one of the tenderloins only a few days later.

When the meat was ready I wrapped it up in foil, along with enough of the marinating juice to keep it moist, and placed it in the smoker using applewood which I hoped would add to the flavor.

Three hours later. I unwrapped my meal and it looked exactly like this.

 No, not the entire donkey only the dangly, unappetizing part.

Now I have been to Mexico and I have seen things I probably shouldn't while there so staring down at my meal I wasn't quite as hungry as I had been only a few minutes before, but hell I'm secure in my manhood and heterosexuality so carved me off a chunk and stabbed it with a fork.

I opened my mouth, inserted the bite of pronghorn tenderloin and chewed.  

It looked like donkey dick and as it turned out, tasted even worse.

The antelope had a decidedly gamey taste, but that alone did not bother me. I am not afraid to have a little of that wild taste. Matter of fact I like it, but the antelope also had a sort of rancid overtone, reminiscent of the flavor you get when you microwave beef for too long. Actually I think anybody who cooks beef in the microwave needs to be shot for blasphemy and wanton wastefulness but that is the subject for another post.

I ate a few more bites, forced another piece onto my nephew and ended up feeding the rest of that tenderloin to my dog. I made the rest of the antelope into jerky but frankly even it was pretty bad, so the moral to this story is the same one you'll find in the opening scenes of No Country For Old Men -- BAD SHIT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SHOOT ANTELOPE.

But like good and evil , tasty and gross are relevant terms so I can't say with certainty I'd never eat antelope again.

After all, if I was hungry and faced with  the choice of Smoked Pronghorn Tenderloin or a Fresh Spring salad I'd still shout, "Carve me up a hunk of that donkey dick!"

In A Kingdom Not So Far Away

From time to time I'm going to take a moment and highlight a member of the Lettuce Is the Devil brethren for without friends, life is worth nothing.

Today I'd like to introduce the one, the only Lissa.

Lissa and her husband are good friends. We enjoy going out for a bit of food and an adult beverage or ten with them. Sadly Lissa still dances with the green one and his evil veggie kin but at least her husband Randy is pure of heart. he is a true meat man, but this post is about Lissa not him.

Lissa is not shy. She is however naive in a few matters ... like ice.

Let's step back in time and share a story about our fairy princess.

Once upon a time our fair maiden began to perspire. Now Princess Lissa hates the heat. She would be happy if the mercury never rose above 45 so sweating is totally beneath her royal self.

But Lissa loves to eat. Not just salads and froo froo frillery but real honest too goodness meat. This is why I still have hope for her. And she will go anywhere or do most anything for a tasty meal so that is why on this hot Texas summer day Lissa found herself at a divey little motorcycle joint that might have had working A/C some time back when Route 66 was actually the mother road.

So there she sat perspiring in that Route 66 greasy spoon waiting for her meal. She'd been partaking of many an adult beverage to keep her parched throat lubricated so soon enough her bladder demanded attention. But alas the women's room had a line.

Now our fair maiden is not about to wait in a line so she quickly ducked into the men's room. There she spied the most curious of sights. A long metal tub full of ice. Now Princess Lissa being of the female persuasion was unaccustomed to  the handiness of something called a urinal. Perhaps she;d seen or heard tell of the fancy new porcelain kind that hang on the wall but an old antique type trough urinal was not something she'd ever heard of.

Or perhaps the heat had melted her brain.

Either way our fair maiden was tempted by the frigid allure of the ice. She dipped her hand in and finding that wholly refreshing she scooped a handful of the crushed cubes and proceeded to run them along her neck and upper chest. Back at the table she asked the men why the restaurant stored ice in the men's room.

Sadly I have no video of Princess Lissa's facial expression upon learning that ice in urinals helps keep the piss smell at bay especially when it is hot and steamy.

But never fear for I do have video of our fair maiden taking her first ever sip of an evil concoction of tomato and clam juice, mixed with beer. It is called a Chillata.

And yes, Lissa brave soul that she is granted her blessings of this post.

A Turd is a Turd

So there I was on twitter. Happily reading the tweets of my peeps when I spot a link to this.

Okay so I know people are lazy and very few actually clicked on that link so I'll tell you about it. A team of Japanese scientist having been mucking around in Tokyo's sewage. Using some fancy scientific crap (pun intended they have extracted proteins, carbohydrates and fats from the feces. Then combining the elements and adding soy protein and red food coloring they are creating an imitation meat product -- steaks and burgers.

No, I am not shitting you. 


According to the article the sewage is heat treated first so the end product is safe to eat.

There goes the old saying, "Eat shit and die."


The food safety guy quoted in the article claims that eating this product which is produced by human shit is equivalent to eating veggies fertilized by excrement since both gain their nutrients via feces. His argument does support my stance that all veggies are crap but this is still a real stinker of an idea.

I seriously doubt event eh most green eco-friendly folk are going to be eager to chow down on a shit burger. And Vegans can't eat anything that came from something with a face. So I ask who the hell is gonna eat this crap?